trendmx search engine optimization software company and seo services

The Web by its very nature is based on hyperlinks, where sites link to other sites. Each site linking to another site is casting a vote in favor of the sites they link to. Since search engines can also find these links on web pages, they are able to determine which sites are more important based on the number and quality of inbound links.
The term “link popularity” refers to a websites online visibility and the number of links the search engines can find pointing to a website. Link popularity metrics also helped the search engines to control spam by shifting their ranking algorithm from purely on-page factors to off-page factors such as counting inbound links.
By combining the ranking scores of on-page, and off-page factors, the search engines can deliver more relevant search results for the web searchers. While it is still possible to achieve high search engine ranking for non-competitive terms without a great deal of link popularity, it is unlikely your site will rank well for very popular terms without it.

The Benefits of Link Popularity

Link popularity building is one of the most important and critical aspects of any effective search engine optimization campaign today and it will be most likely the main ranking criteria in the foreseeable future on the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN. A website’s link popularity score, Google's PageRank and “anchor text” in the incoming text links plays a major role in how well it will rank in the search engine result pages. However there are a few rules that you should keep in mind to maximize your link popularity building efforts.

What are the top 10 Rules to Gain the Most From Inbound Links?

1. Inbound links from domains with relevant topics should be your first and foremost aim and this requires the development of great content and a desire to contribute something useful to the world wide web. If you have something useful to offer, other websites will link to you naturally.
2. Inbound links from search engine friendly crawlable web pages. This rule is very simple, if the search engines can’t reach the web pages where your links are located, your website will not gain any link popularity. It’s not always possible to dictate how and where your links are placed, but in most cases you can request a link from a static, indexable web page.
3. Inbound links from older domains with high search engine ranking are classified as authority websites by the search engines and obtaining links from these website is a great way to increase your website’s link popularity. You can find out how old a website is by using the archive.org tool.
4. Inbound links form unique domains with their own class C IP address have a greater weight than multiple links from the same domain. Acquiring inbound links from different C class IP address blocks tells the search engines the domains are hosted on the different web servers.
5. Inbound links should be permanent and static. The search engines can detect when inbound links appear first and by removing and adding links at a great rate can send signals of low quality to the search engines. The search engines love static hyperlinks, but they have trouble following links redirected through server side scripts. Also keep in mind, the use of rel=”nofollow” links in the code will not pass the link popularity benefits to the target website.
6. Inbound links nestled in the content of a web page are more effective especially when surrounded by text related to your website’s topic. When links naturally occur in a body of text, the search engines assign a higher link popularity score to those links compared to links on pages with hundreds of other outbound links per page.
7. Inbound links from .edu, .gov domains are trusted by the search engines over .com, .net or other top level domains. The argument in favor of search engines giving a higher weight to .edu and .gov domain links is that the inbound links are much harder to attain and there is supporting evidence in patent documents filed by Google pointing to a document scoring system that takes TLD information into consideration.
8. Inbound links from authority sites directories like dmoz.org, dir.yahoo.com have long been regarded as important building blocks of link popularity for any website. Since both of these directories employ human editors to review individual websites, the search engines place a greater trust factor on websites listed in these directories. Some of the other well established human edited directories include botw.org, goguides.org and joant.com.
9. Inbound links with a wide variety of anchor text. Most new website owners make the mistake of requesting links to their website using the same anchor text, which is very unnatural and sends a clear signal to the search engines about someone trying to manipulate link popularity and ultimately the site’s search engine ranking. Make your website “link worthy” and people will naturally link to your website using varying link text.
10. Inbound links from local websites can help better target keywords specific to a city, region, state or country. Obtaining links from local businesses, chamber of commerce site or local charities will help your ranking for regionally targeted keyword phrases.

By gaining more inbound links to your website, you can help to improve your website’s link popularity score and the overall ranking on the search engines. The key concept to understand is that, link popularity is not merely about the sheer number of inbound links. In other words, it's not just about getting lots of links from anywhere. Instead, you want links from established websites that are related to your website’s topics with a high degree of reputation on the search engines.